THE 1996 WELL-CONNECTED AWARDS
Best NOS: NetWare 4.1 Maintains Its 'Boss NOS' Title
Retaining its status as "the boss NOS," Novell NetWare 4.1 is
once again our Well-Connected award winner for network operating system.
Although 1995 was not a revolutionary year for network operating systems,
NT is making advances and gaining momentum. But, simply put, NetWare 4.1
continues to be the most effective platform for enterprise network services.
NetWare 4.1's claim to fame is its NetWare Directory Services (NDS). Novell's
NDS allows users to gain access to resources anywhere on the network without
any knowledge of the locatio
n of those resources. In addition, NDS offers
the ability to search the entire tree for a particular resource, such as
a printer or print queue. This directory is much more robust and feature
rich than current offerings from Microsoft, whose domain model is more limited
in functionality. NDS is the key directory of resources for many enterprises,
and applications such as Oracle can take advantage of NDS without having
to reinvent the wheel for each application.
If you are looking for applications to run on your server, NetWare 4.1 still
has the greatest support from third-party software developers. NetWare 4.1
has support for both the widest range of products as well as products with
the most depth. Products range from anti-virus applications to network management
to HSM. With this plethora of choices comes the ability for users to select
which product fits their needs. While many of these ISPs are slowing dev-elopment
of NetWare applications
for NT ones, NetWare still poses the greatest number
of
third-party applications.
NetWare's other strengths include advanced file management such as built-in
support for HSM, and file and directory compression that is superior to
NT and whose features are only now showing up in third-party applications.
Other distinguishing features of NetWare 4.1 are routing of native protocols
over the LAN and the ability to limit disk usage by user--a feature still
woefully lacking in NT but being filled by third-party developers. Novell
also has the advantage in remote administration, a key feature if you ask
any LAN administrator.
On the heels of NetWare 4.1, Microsoft's Windows NT Server 3.51 was built
upon the solid foundation of 3.50. Microsoft added support for the PowerPC
processor, a new licensing manager, compression (which was already in NetWare
4.1) and incorporated operating system upgrades. The NT Server is gaining
momentum as an application server and has focused itself on the Internet
and related services as a key objective. In its favor,
NT Server has the
ability to work with a variety of processors, including the PowerPC, MIPS,
Alpha and Intel. Unlike NetWare 4.1, NT Server ships with Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP) and an FTP Server that can be the building block for an
intranet or Internet server. NT Sever is also becoming a popular choice
for Internet ISPs, and a host of HTTP servers are available, making NT Server
a very cost-effective Internet server.
Honorable Mention:
Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51, Microsoft Corp.
Sun Solaris 2.5, SunSoft
April 1, 1996
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